“We’re working to finalise visas to the Afghan Ladies’s Growth Workforce and stay up for welcoming them to the UK shortly,” a UK authorities spokesperson informed CNN.
The UK House Workplace declined to touch upon the kind of visas the gamers and their households could be receiving.
In August, the UK authorities introduced a resettlement scheme for Afghan residents dealing with “threats of persecution from the Taliban.”
The scheme, which prioritizes ladies, ladies, and non secular minorities, will see the UK soak up 20,000 refugees over the following 5 years.
Thirty 5 younger footballers, largely youngsters, and their households — a complete of 130 individuals — missed the airlift evacuations from Kabul in August, based on a UK-based charity, ROKiT Basis, which is offering help.
“With the help of some very courageous individuals on the bottom in Afghanistan, the ladies made the perilous journey in small teams to the Pakistan border and all had been, ultimately, capable of get by means of”, stated Jonathan Kendrick, the founding father of the ROKiT Basis.
‘They’ve proper to dream’
Pakistan granted the gamers and their households non permanent 30-day visas they usually had been transported to Lahore earlier than making use of for UK visas, Kendrick stated.
With the profitable visa software, Kendrick stated the second part of the operation was the “protected lodging of the ladies” in Pakistan earlier than the third part, to return in “the following couple of weeks”, of the relocation of the ladies and their households to the UK.
Siu-Anne Marie Gill, CEO of the ROKiT Basis, stated the charity would proceed to supply help within the UK “to incorporate serving to to rearrange additional schooling […] in addition to trials for the gamers with a number of of the English skilled ladies’s soccer groups who’ve already expressed nice curiosity in assembly them.”
Andrea Radrizzani, chairman of English Premier League facet Leeds United, final month urged the UK authorities to assist the ladies resettle within the nation.
In an announcement despatched to CNN, the Leeds proprietor stated he was “able to help in any method we are able to to provide the ladies a affluent and peaceable future.”
